The executive counsel at the fossil fuel behemoth ExxonMobil is leaving his role to join the Trump Justice Department’s newly renamed Energy and Natural Resources Division, a move one watchdog organization said shows that “Big Oil’s capture of the US government is now complete.”
Robert Levy, who worked at Exxon for 17 years, announced in a recent LinkedIn post that he is departing the company, whose profits surged amid the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran. Levy will reportedly serve as senior counsel at the DOJ’s Energy and Natural Resources Division, which the Trump Justice Department renamed last month from the Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday that “the new so-called Energy and Natural Resources Division at the Justice Department explicitly aims to abuse emergency powers to drive oil and gas production, override state environmental enforcement, and generally serve at the beck and call of Big Oil.”
“Nothing could make that more clear than the naming of Robert Levy, ExxonMobil’s former executive counsel, a position that had him leading the company’s legal strategy on advocacy and civil justice, to run the division,” said Weissman. “The Justice Department that should be fighting to protect clean air and water and avert catastrophic climate change will now work on behalf of polluters to advance the poisoning of people and the planet.”
US President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on delivering massive, climate-destroying wins for the oil and gas industry, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support the president’s White House bid and the campaigns of his Republican allies.
Fossil fuel giants have received a significant return on their investment. As Owen Bacskai of the Brennan Center for Justice noted, Trump’s “signature legislative package—which one executive deemed ‘positive for us across all of our top priorities’—gives oil and gas firms $18 billion in tax incentives while rolling back incentives for clean energy alternatives.”
Trump has also “placed fossil fuel allies in charge of the agencies that oversee the industry and fast-tracked drilling projects on public lands,” Bacskai wrote. “In just his first 100 days back in office, Trump took at least 145 actions to undo environmental rules—more than he reversed during his entire first term as president. Before Trump even reentered the White House, the industry was reportedly pre-drafting executive orders for him to issue.”
Perhaps the biggest gift to Big Oil was the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision earlier this year to repeal the “endangerment finding” underpinning climate regulations.
Critics expect more of the same industry-friendly actions from the Trump DOJ’s Energy and Natural Resources Division, which last week touted its role in defending “Trump’s executive orders on unleashing American energy, reinvigorating the clean coal industry, and declaring an energy emergency.”
“The Justice Department that should be fighting to protect clean air and water and avert catastrophic climate change will now work on behalf of polluters to advance the poisoning of people and the planet," said Weissman of Public Citizen.
Last year, Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project released an analysis showing that the Trump administration has installed dozens of former fossil fuel industry employees, executives, and lawyers across the federal government, positioning Big Oil allies to advance “the massive expansion of polluting energy, the destruction of public lands, and the sabotage and suppression of renewable energy.”
“This is nothing short of a Texas oil industry takeover of the US government at the expense of consumers, the climate, public health, and public lands and waters,” Alan Zibel, a research director at Public Citizen, said at the time of the report’s release. “To execute his extreme, reckless, backward-looking fossil fuel agenda, Trump has stocked his administration with fossil fuel staffers and ideologues.”
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